Critic's Notebook

Coming Home to Roost

Verve Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
Iona (2016)

By SARAH MANVEL

This is a very capable small Scottish film, but it is let down by two things: The first is the obvious plot developments — they are meant to be twists, but perhaps only to people who know nothing of human nature. The second is that the title character (Ruth Negga), who was awkwardly named after the island where she was born and raised, is the only mixed-race person in the film.

House of Godforsaken

Music Box Films

MOVIE REVIEW
The Club (2016)

By SARAH MANVEL

“The Club” is the opposite of flash-bang-wallop cinema, where ordinary life hardly exists under the explosions which are meant to bring peace and justice but instead vanish into nothing but tidy blockbuster profits. This movie is a disturbing slow burner, without a superhero in sight, which takes a level gaze at the cost of evil and how to manage the humans responsible for it.